“Metal.” He grinned until she drummed her fingers on the table. “Infused iron?”
“Indeed! Every metal has an infused sibling, so to speak. Ikoruv means ‘holy iron’ in the ancient tongue, but there’s nothing godly about it.”
“Then how does it become Ikoruv instead of iron?”
“I suppose the gods could create it.” She chortled. “This is one of the great mysteries of my trade. You’ve heard also of infused gems? Diamonds which heal…”
“Pearls which connect two souls.”
Her head cocked. “I never heard of this, but many things are possible. Gems may be found infused, the most powerful by far, while others a lapidary might infuse themselves. One Element. An infused diamond is most often imbued with Life. Not so with metals… they don’t heal, they don’t bind the dying’s soul to their body, they don’t prevent the deceased from becoming the Wakened Dead. So, the theory is that they are “infused” by, not with, all the Elements at once, and this creates a metal with unusual properties.”
“What metal is Latcu?”
“None. Many assume it’s a form of infused diamond, or perhaps infused volcanic glass. Nobody knows.”
“So Ikoruv, what makes it so valuable?”
She reached into a box and brought forth a bar of black metal, dropped it onto the table. Then, a chunk of what looked like a black rock, except its flat faces reflected the light with a metallic glint. “Ikoruv in its native form, and one smelted. Both of these will be used in your shield. Steel is iron made hard with carbon, too much carbon and it becomes brittle and breaks. Ikoruv is hard as steel in its natural state, harder even, and it flexes with a more perfect memory of its shape than steel. You want as little carbon as possible in its use.”
“And you need the Sun Forge to smelt Ikoruv?”
“It is very difficult to bring a normal forge to a heat to melt Ikoruv, but it can be done in several places throughout the Foundations. But it is with greater effort.” She lifted a silvery bar and set it on the table. “This is?”
It felt like a trick question, but he went with the obvious answer expecting to be wrong. “Silver.”
“Indeed. And this?” A second silvery bar, but in this case the color held a blood-red tint.
“I’m guessing infused silver?”
“Ofdôlus, yes, known as the ‘blood chime’. It is the metal which gives the Singing Shields its name. The Ikoruv gives the shield is strength, Ofdôlus its tint and song.” She picked up a dinner knife and rapped the Ikoruv with a clunk, but on striking the Ofdôlus, it was as if a chime had been struck. A perfect low note.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Forge these two metals into a shield and you have an amazing tool. Protection, indeed! Near indestructible. But they also play their song, and men use them to send messages in battle, or to intimidate the enemy before a fight. But what else would it be?”
He leaned back in his seat with a smile. “Heavy.”
“Which is where the third ingredient for your shield comes in.” She reached behind her to grab a jar and plopped it on the table.
“An empty jar?”
She flipped it upside down, and a silvery-liquid floated to the base of the jar, which was now the top. “Lislinêum. Infused Mercury. Lighter than air, and when alloyed into your shield, reduces the weight by half. When we have enough Ofdôlus and Lislinêum we will be able to start your shield.”
Solineus grabbed the jar, turning it a couple times; floating blobs of shiny silver hovered then rose. “Has anyone ever crafted a water-clock with this stuff?”
She laughed, but then her brows scrunched. “An interesting notion.”
“Ivin’s shield is lighter than it looks, I’d wager it’s an Ikoruv-Lislinêum alloy.”
“Ikoruv won’t stop Latcu by its lonesome. Someday I would like to see this Warlord’s shield.”
The infused ores were slow in arriving, so Solineus spent a lot of time getting to know Tongs the cat better and waiting for pigeons from Kinesee and Morik. Three notes from Kinesee, but not a word from Morik; he grew worried for the man as it’d been two months since they parted ways. A week later a shipment of cinnabar, and as he watched Lislinêum float from the reddish mineral thoughts of Morik faded to the back of his mind; emêsu had her materials to start the shield and would only need to wait for forge time to get to work.
He should’ve known better than to get excited; word from Morik arrived before work began. Hîmr’s Coin rested safe in the vaults of Molikîn, and Morik was home in Shuntiskâ with his wife and children. His heart at peace with this news, Kinesee’s next letter proved a better distraction for his imagination.
Dear Father,
Pigeons have been my distraction these past weeks as we’ve moved into a new building built in the Roemhien next to the wall, which is taller than me now across most of the gap. Eight towers are planned plus the keep. A hundred people, give or take a hundred depending on which day it is, have taken to camping south of the wall along the pass. Families already hunt to the south and word is several plan expeditions into the dense forests found out of the mountains.
Ivin believes he spotted an Ôgrihîn at a distance the other day; he claims it’s twice the size of a Colok. You know more of what that’d mean as I never seen none of the Colok. Ivin said to imagine something with a body the size of a bison, only walking like a man on legs like tree trunks. I tried not to imagine it.
Meliu has disappeared from Ivin’s life since we came to the wall, which is good. I adore her, but the eyes she and Ivin make would be bad enough without disturbing talk of the Codex of Sol. Still no clue in the prophecies of why anyone would want me dead.
So! I’m alive.
Your pearl rubber,
Kinesee
emêsu invited Solineus to the Sun Forge for the first time the day after Kinesee’s latest note winged into the pigeon-master. He wore nothing but his lightest linens as instructed, but kept the Twins on his back. Within a flicker of stepping into the hall he dripped with sweat and his clothes stuck to him.
emêsu handed him a canteen and gestured toward the center of the room. A massive cauldron, with feet shaped as the heads of gryphons, and fashioned from some white metal rested dead center in the room. There was no fire he could see, but there was a light as intense as the heat in the room emanating from a structure dangling above the cauldron like a chandelier. Men and women clad in heavy aprons and heavy gloves moved around the room, but no one drew close to the forge.
She pointed to a platform which stood twenty paces from the center. “That there is as close as we get to the Sun Forge unless we need to, and then we wear goggles to block the light. Men have gone blind when drawing too close.”
“I’m as close I need to be.” He took a drink of water.
She slapped him on the back and led him toward the platform’s steps. “Come! Those bars leading from the platform have grooves. We place materials in them and raise our end to dump the metals into the forge to heat.” They climbed atop and a man brought her two small crates. She pointed again, to a mirror above the forge; the reflection showed the bottom glowing red. “First it will glow a hundred shades of yellow before turning hundreds of shades of red, before turning a hundred shades of blue. Once blue it would be hotter, much hotter than we need.”
“What the hells requires hotter than Ikoruv?”
“A few of the rarest ores.”
“What makes it so hot?”
“You remember our conversation about infused gems? The Sun Chandelier holds gemstones, all infused with Elemental Heat. A vestige of the God Wars. No living man knows how to craft another.”
Solineus whistled. This was a thing men wouldn’t simply kill for, they’d go to war if they could figure out how to move it. No wonder the Kingdoms all agreed to share.
She turned to an assistant. “A half keg of water if you will.” She lifted three balls of Ikoruv and placed them in a groove and waited as the man lifted and poured water down a broad pipe. Steam bi
llowed as the water hit the forge, and for the first time he looked up; a golden dome with a hole allowed the steam to escape.
His eyes lowered as the Ikoruv balls rumbled down the chute, and he gazed into the mirror to watch them hit the cauldron’s round bottom and rolled in circles, but they turned red within flickers.
“A quarter keg of smelt-water.” Water flowed and the Ikoruv disappeared in steam. “Ikoruv is mostly pure to start, but steam can help remove the few impurities which might persist after they’re smelted into balls.”
When the steam cleared, he watched as the Ikoruv pooled and bubbled into a glowing red mass. “Peculiar in its beauty.”
“Indeed! The Sun Forge is art in many ways, masterworks few people will ever see.” She lifted a ball of silvery-red metal and tossed it to him; unready, his hand rushed to the catch, but it fell slow until resting in his palm with a gentle landing. And she laughed. “I alloyed the Ofdôlus and Lislinêum yesterday… visitors aren’t allowed to witness this procedure. But, if we tried to add the Lislinêum raw, it would turn to gas in the heat required to melt the Ikoruv.”
Solineus tossed it back to her, the shimmering ball falling at a feathers pace. “That is impressive.”
“Indeed!” She took three alloy balls, each about a quarter the size of the Ikoruv, and rolled them down the chute. They hit the molten Ikoruv and disappeared in splotches of silver that spread to cover the bubbling surface. They stood and stared, but she didn’t tell him what they waited for. She turned to the assistant. “It is done. Drain it.”
She led him back down the ladder and straight toward the door. “Where does it go?”
“It drains to an underground chamber. Here the masters of the Sun Forge will weigh the material again to make sure the Ironwing will pay right and proper. After, they will bring it to me, and the real work begins.”
Solineus drained his canteen in chugs after setting foot outside the Sun Forge, savoring the light breeze traveling the hall. They sat in her chambers for a candle waiting, and he jumped at the knock on her door; he hated to admit how excited he was to see the thing.
A woman at the door handed emêsu a disc of metal close to four feet in diameter. She turned to him with a smile and tossed it at him. It came fast with no lack of weight, but it was lighter than he’d imagined. The black Ikoruv weighed a brick at most and was so thin. He grinned at her. “You sure that’ll stop anything?”
She snatched it away with pursed lips. “Your head won’t dent it, I assure you.” She struck the disc with her knuckles and the metal chimed. “The molten metals bond, but—”she flipped the disc, the reverse side a beautiful silvery red—”as you saw in the forge the Ofdôlus alloy shows on one side. I will heat and pound it until its concave. With the black on its face its song will be bass and it will show less damage, with the silver it will be higher, and more beautiful in appearance and tone, but more prone to scratch. It is your choice.”
The red-silver tempted him, gorgeous, but such a reflection might get him killed. “Ikoruv on the outer.”
“This is the warrior’s choice.” She grinned. “And the assassin’s.”
He squinted with a grunt. “I’m no assassin.” I failed at that.
14
The Low Mountains
Tenor’s vibrato from the hawk’s beak,
soaring sleek ignoring the vulture’s favorite wreak.
Song sung or cursing the blinding sun,
updrafts carry the carrion’s uncaring laugh
to the wing-ed ear, beaten back by wings aflap,
the dead man smiles and cares not for smells he makes,
he only wishes to be heard and understood.
Words, words, rotten words,
Words, words, fading from rotten flesh.
—Tomes of the Touched
Winter came and did its damnedest to bury the Sun Forge and the city of Holvin Dô-ar, but no snow could stick to that building and its golden dome as fires burned. However, it guaranteed he’d be stuck there until the spring thaw.
Which turned out just fine, as his shield wasn’t done by then. emêsu worked his shield every day, but split time on multiple projects. No way to hurry perfection, she assured him. One day near spring she presented him with the disc, pounded into a concave shield glorious to behold… then she took it from him. The next step was the polish. And again, perfection couldn’t be hurried.
The snows were long gone, grasses grew, and birds sang, by the time she handed him the shield for keeps. And when she did, she grabbed a hammer and pounded at him: Not a mark, let alone a dent, but his shoulder felt the impact the next morning. Despite the pain, he’d determined to leave, but again emêsu held other plans.
“A man not of the Sun Forge isn’t allowed to travel with our deliveries.” She held up a single silver dâgut. “But I can hire you as escort. This is all I can afford, seeing how I worked on your shield for a pittance, but if you hire on, you’ll have a safe journey so far as Klondihîk in Barkûsh. It’ll slow your pace, but you’ll be passing through regions thick with Ôgrihîn… slow is better than dead.”
Solineus grumbled and scowled, but snatched the coin from her fingers with a vision of Kinesee’s description of the beasts in his head. “A pittance, my ass.”
She winked and strolled away, and a week later he rode from Holvin Dô-ar amid a caravan of four wagons and forty warriors. Not a soul offered to tell him what cargo he guarded, and he didn’t bother to ask; so long as it wasn’t stonebreakers, he was happy to be back in the saddle and riding.
What he discovered in less than a day was that his body was no longer used to a saddle, and he ached for three days before his muscles acclimated. Their route took them east before turning west, then swung them to the city of Dôldên in the Kingdom of Ômkinter. On the surface Dôldên appeared a small, sleepy place with thick black walls and an undersized gatehouse, but its streets bustled with Kingdomers and he learned later that he stood atop one of the largest mining complexes in the Foundations, with hundreds of horizons in tunnels winding beneath the five surrounding mountains. They unloaded nailed-shut crates of goods and loaded boxes that rattled with loose ore. Several guards left and more hired on, disciplined and efficient in every stage.
A two-day stint to hire and resupply before they traveled past the Ômkinter towns of Nîzin, Vêrdan, and Homtok before entering the mountains of the Kingdom of Œrinklîn. Here their primary stop was in the city of Gîgan, but to his mind it was more a fortress. Horizons of massive walls surrounded a mountain valley and a river flowed through its middle before filling Lake Terbemor a hundred horizons to the south. The Œrinklîn people were more standoffish than other kingdoms, more reserved, but till downright jocular compared to the Ôshô.
They spent a week in Gîgan and he suffered a couple hangovers drinking with other guards before he smartened up and turned in early every night. Kingdomers could hold their weight in beer and ale, and he swore they didn’t even need to piss as often as he did.
From Gîgan they wound through some of the roughest mountains he’d yet seen, and instead of making their way to mines and towns, riders followed rocky trails into the mountains and brought back mule trains of raw ore. Travel was slow as treacle flowing uphill in the winter, and at some point, he wasn’t sure when or where, they’d entered the Kingdom of Danlok. They traveled for weeks and only entered one city, Yusdulên, and only for a night and fresh supplies.
A few days from Yusdulên moods brightened; the terrain changed as they passed the border into Barkush, and they found the roads wider, flatter, and straighter. He learned that Barkûsh meant “low mountains” in the old tongue, but it might as well have meant pleasant. Only the tallest mountains wore snow on their crowns, the ridges and valleys were rolling rather than severe, and everything that wasn’t a rock stood covered with grasses sporting flowers on their heads instead of thorns. The sun shone through gauzy clouds, and the rains they met were warm. Other guards nicknamed the region “ Tusfala Emit Mêomet ,”
the Land the Gods Smiled Upon.
They rolled past a dozen villages before they reached the city of Klondihîk, which sat on and surrounded the low mountain of the same name. Gleaming white marble walls rose in three tiers before a square keep rose high from atop the peak, where banners of yellow, blue, and green snapped in the winds. From his vantage on first seeing the city, he spotted six roads leading to the eastern gates; he recalled Ivin’s tale of the city of Bdein and its wealth and wondered if he’d just found its rival.
From a distance it appeared ideal, but it was also a king’s city, a place the Dark Waters would expect to find him. If they still bothered searching for him.
The streets were clean, the people polite, and he’d never before seen so many horses without there being a battle. And some pulled carriages, silk covered, and they even had lanterns built right into them. Minstrels performed on the street corners of the trade district, and as they probed deeper into the city, strings of colorful pennants adorned the streets.
No city could be so perfect all the time. He rode to Junûk’s side, the head of the guardsman. “Klondihîk always this festive?”
“Not so far off! But, the Festival of the Righteous Dancer is less than a week away.” Righteous Dancer referred to the goddess Insôum, but this was all he knew. “Barkûsh from across the realm will arrive throughout the week, some family of mine own, no doubt.”
Wicks later they rolled into a caravansary like he’d never imagined. A full three dozen wagons lined the courtyard, each with Kingdomers crawling over them like ants on honey to haul crates and supplies into three-story warehouses. Opposite the windowless warehouses stood the pretty sibling, three stories as well, but sporting stained-glass windows and flapping banners and pennants. Along its face, a covered boardwalk with two doors leading inside, one gilt in silver, the other gold.
Junûk pointed. “Gold doors are for the merchants, silver for us guards, drivers, and hands. Rooms are at a reasonable price and you’ll work hard to find thicker, softer down ticks anywhere.”
“I won’t be staying long. You’re of Barkûsh?”
Solineus Page 15
